Thursday, February 28, 2013

Announcements and Events and New Stuff and Inventions and Life Is Just Exploding With Possibilities Today!

In yesterday's post, entitled "Harbinger of Scabies: The Mighty Mite That Might (Give You Scabies)," I used the word "theorum," and a reader tells me I should have written "theorem" instead:

Sadly, if Albert Einstein were still with us today, everybody would give him a bunch of crap for not wearing a helment, which would have inspired this theorum: theorem
Duly noted, and thanks, but I would remind anyone reading this blog to lower their expectations with regard to anything even remotely cerebral, since this is where I got my higher education, and I can assure you it was exactly as it's portrayed in the video.

If you're unfamiliar with Brooklyn, it's a wealthy suburb of New York City and easily the most pretentious town on Long Island--so much so that it makes the entire North Shore seem like, well, what Brooklyn used to be like. In fact, Brooklyn has become so precious that I swore off the place (and I'm pretty precious myself, so that says something), but I agreed to return because the opportunity to help a liquor company promote itself and promote myself at the same time was simply too good to pass up.

Anyway, you should come, because not only can you win a bike, but also because this is a great opportunity to get very drunk and laugh at me and not with me. As for the performances by "The Babies and Nude Beach," I don't know if it's a band called "The Babies" and another band called "Nude Beach," or if it's one band called "The Babies and Nude Beach," or it's just a piece of performance art in which they cover the stage with sand and let a bunch of babies and naked people roll around on it, but whatever it is you can RSVP here and find out.

I'll do my best to make it fun, and if I fail you can blame the organizers and sponsors. And let's hope nobody gets so drunk on Jack Daniel's that they die on the ride home, because that would be quite a publicity misfire.

Speaking of publicity, I've just been informed that the Giro New Road clothing collection embargo has been lifted. Here's what the Giro New Road stuff looks like:

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have even remembered that the embargo was on if they hadn't emailed me to tell me it was off. To be even more honest, I don't even really understand what an embargo is, or why you'd put one on bloggers. I thought it's what you did to people like King Jong-un and Mahmoud Abdoujaparov. I guess the point of this kind of embargo is that they spend a few months stroking and teasing a bunch of dorky bike bloggers into a state of hyper-arousal, but they time it so that the bloggers all climax in a sploodge of information on the same day, giving the the entire cycling world a great big marketing facial.

I feel so dirty, and so should you.

Cynicism aside, I do like the idea behind this stuff. It seems like nice clothing in which to ride a bike, and the idea is basically that you can ride 200 miles and then go straight to your little cousin's Bar Mitzvah without going home and changing first because it has a collar and it's made out of merino so it won't smell. (I mean you'll still smell, but the shirt won't). It's all very 21st century, since if you haven't noticed we're now living in an age of dissolving boundaries and society is moving towards seamlessness and total integration. Smartphones, connectivity, arriving at the Bar Mizvah, going commando, not changing, whipping that smartphone right out of the pocket of your Giro New Road shants and and transferring some gelt right into the Bar Mitzvah boy's account while he's still belting out the Haftarah... I'm only half-Jewish and was never Bar Mitzvah-ed. But that's not the point. I went to a fuckload of them, and I wore a jacket with shoulder pads. The point is different wardrobes for different stuff is sooo 20th century. I can't wait until everybody is wearing all-purpose merino bodysuits everywhere they go.

This is only the beginning.

Oh, also, I have one of the t-shirts. It looks like this:

It's very nice, but since it's still February I haven't yet worn it to make the biking--though I have been wearing it for running. Yes, I'm still running semi-regularly. Just imagine some dork dressed in a hodgepodge of cycling clothes stumbling around the neighborhood in a pair of bright white running shoes, flushed and panting with a bunch of snot running from his nose. I look like some idiot that just got his bike stolen and failed to catch the thief--and this is before I've even started running. It's an unmitigated fitness disaster.

Still, I think it's important. You'll often read bikey types waxing pretentious about how suffering and grinding your way up long climbs builds character and leads to inspiration and self-discovery. This is a load of crap. What builds character is looking and feeling like a complete idiot while doing something you don't know how to do, and being mocked for it in the process. It's not physical effort that builds mental fortitude; rather, it's embarrassment. After awhile riding a bike simply isn't embarrassing anymore, and that's why I'm running--for that exhilarating moment when the real runners trot by me, giggle, and shake their heads with pity, or when a neighborhood child simply points and laughs.

Though it's sort of hard to get past the fact that no Cat 3 has legs that look like that:

Sure, Cat 3s think they have legs like that, so they shave them and tan them and slather them with unguents, but it's really all for nothing, because after all that their legs just end up looking like a pair of oily kosher franks.

Years ago, long-time bicycle enthusiast and three-dimensional mechanical designer, Leonard Ashman, was watching his father-in-law struggle trying to change his rear bike wheel. As Leonard watched, he had a flash of insight that after years of design, prototyping and testing lead to the industry-changing quick-release rear wheel axle design – HubDock.

If people re-invented every simple contraption after watching their inept fathers-in-law try to work them then we'd be living in a gigantic Rube Goldberg machine. What is wrong with the quick release as we know it? You flip it open, you pick up the bike, and the wheel falls out. Maybe you have to nudge the derailleur a bit. So why is this guy spinning and spinning it like it's a propeller?

Meanwhile, it looks like you have to unscrew the "HubDock," which basically makes it a glorified wingnut (to say nothing of its inventor). Furthermore, because the cassette stays on the bike, you can't just switch to a different wheel with different gearing. Still, "tests" reveal it's faster somehow:

Tests to date have shown that a wheel using the Liberty Wheel driven hub can be removed or replaced in as little as five seconds as compared with contemporary systems requiring between fifteen to twenty seconds or more.

Presumably their test subject was the guy in the video who puts his bike in a bizarre doggie-style position and then futzes with the skewer needlessly for half a minute before finally pulling the damn wheel out.

Lastly, a local cyclist appears to have had a thrilling daredevil encounter with a gay Orthodox Jew:

Orange skateboard and a death wish. - w4m (Greenwich Village)
We were side by side riding up Bedford, me on a white bike and with a white helmet, you on an orange skateboard and a rainbow knit beanie. You ducked under the side mirrors of the cars at the intersection of 7th and then sped off. I wanted to scream "Yeah! But be careful!"

Please don't die, I want to ride with you again.

If you have a better explanation for a rainbow knit beanie then I'd like to hear it.

Babies and nude beaches--sounds like the kind of kiddie porn we'd associate with Jack Daniels--the South's revenge for losing the Civil War. That crap is proudly brewed and distilled by toothless rednecks in Lynchburg (no, no joke) Tennessee.

"Three Dimensional Mechanical Engineer"...convinced himself that removing the rear wheel TAKES FOREVER yet overweight and swarthy Belgian mechanics manage to jump out of team cars and remove rear wheels from bicycles during races ALL THE FUCKING TIME at something approaching light-speed.

Hey Ken, I did for team Zephyr, which was what Brava was renamed to about when I started. I used to go to the training sessions at Bethel Industrial Park. Usually BJ was there, and occasionally Pete J. Also the Sandy Hook to Pomperaug ride for the training circuit over there.

I used to work for Bike Express and briefly at Bethel Cycle, but didn't run either place...

Wow Anon 2:12, I'm blushing. I walked into that one. Hmmm, don't want to appear as a braggart and am too discreet to offer up testimonials. So perhaps the best way to answer is to say maybe that is a question (or challenge) for you.

Crosspalms:Been to that brewery many times. Will hit Capital Brewery in Middleton as I think it's Bockfest this weekend.I will also go to Lululemon and watch the ladies try on yoga wear while the Mrs. goes to Macy's.

Over the past few month, I wrestled down a bottle of Jack Daniel's. It made me think, that it would make more sense to get The Macallan Distillery to sponsor any event where whisky is the drug of choice. The flask might look pathetic but their whisky is rightout gorgeous.

1. Running is good, keep it up. Can't live by cycling alone. 2. I can think of many things that are better than a whole bunch of splooge. Does splooge come in a bunch? 3. that stripped shirt, awful, looks like something a hipster Charlie Brown would wear. 4. Babble, I don't want to hear about Snobs bum, ever. Please refrain from any further mention.4. Cat3 comic guy, your exaggerated homoerotic renderings of cat 3 cyclists are disturbing

Actually, I'd buy the hub dock, because the one and only bad thing about my Barcroft SWB is that the rear wheel is insanely difficult to remove. I'd even fund the damn thing if only they didn't play that deedly-deedly guitar throughout the totally earnest video. So if they do produce 100, they'll sell at least one.

The public face of "American bicycling" is the pretentious person who valiantly rides an expensive drop bar bicycle, while boldly wearing stupid form fitting clothes, AND while heroically complaining about the whole process AND at the same time staring the rest of us down as if we are the sick ones. With “advertising” such as that, why would the “normal American” want to embrace cycling? Ms. Babble on’s photo of herself, on her Dutch bike wearing her rain coat: now that a fun and inspiring picture of bicycling. And besides, even Einstein rode a cruiser (or at least a European version thereof).

I lurrrrrrrrve to get all kitted out in the spandex, though, with the goofy shoes, and hit the roads on my Lynskey....

Worse, no matter what I am on, I am the worst sort of cat 6 cyclist. I do treat stop signs as yields, I do jump the red when the intersection is clear (safer for me to be in front and seen) and I do swear loudly at stupid human tricks (it's easier than installing a horn.)

The bikedock looks like an updated version of the Cinelli Bivalent hub system of the 1970s. It is actually a really good idea. Who wouldn't prefer to not have to keep their hands clear of a greasy chain while fixing a flat, switching back into the right gear to start riding again, or tearing off a chain peg because you forgot you hooked the chain on it? I especially like the idea of the chain and cog staying together when stowing the bike inside the car. The downside to good ideas like this, though, is poor parts availability if they don't have widespread adoption, but then, how many other systems have experienced similar fates? It's not such a big deal in a throw-away society like ours has become.

Ms. babble on, an angry outburst at an indiscretion is one thing, but outright contempt for the non-roadie cylist is still another. And treating stops signs as yields and stop lights as stop signs is progressive, at least here in Idaho. And no doubt you look great in lycra.

Mr. wishiwasmerckx, I meant no disrespect to the European bike. I was imply being Ameracentric buy using the term cruiser. I'm not worldly but I have never heard the European use that term for their wonderful bikes.

I don't know about Dr. Einstein's education or work history, all I know of by the picture of him on the bike is that it is not a drop bar bike and he appears to be enjoying himself.

Snobby, FYI, Cat 3 comics were around 15-18 years ago. Different artwork, but same stories. You could "mail" in a check for $3, and they would "mail" you an issue back. (how 90's) He worked out of some place in South Dakota...

Snob, some readers don't appreciate the subtle nuances of your prose (that's the great thing about typing - I don't have to do it with a straight face). The fact that you wrote helment and theorum in the same sentence just isn't enough of a cue for us. You should have mentioned Albert's breakless cycling as well. We're not a cultchurred bunch.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!